Global Warming: another straw in the cold wind

Hello, what is this? BBC comedians (Armstrong and Miller, no less) making fun out of the failure of Global Warming to be … warm?

Spotted by the ever-alert Delingpole, who has the video up at his blog. It’s under a minute long and is a must-see, if you’ve not already seen it.

I wonder if it was that earlier viral video, the one in the classroom with the exploding kids, that alerted these guys to the comedic possibilities of this debate? The reaction to this latest piece of (I trust) internet virality will be interesting.

It’s not exactly making fun of the failure of global warming to be warm but it is making fun of the rather authoritarian tone of the efforts of the government to convince the public of the reality of AGW.

That is interesting. Comedians like to be seen as rebellious in contrast to the square, boring, daddy-like government – but hitherto that particular sort of rebellion had not been thought a fit subject for humour by the mostly left wing comics at the BBC.

It used to be that the typical believer in AGW was seen as a passionate young student. This sketch implicitly portrays the typical believer in AGW as a hectoring government official, and the rebel role is taken on by the ordinary bloke.

What comes across, as Natalie says, is the authoritarian (totalitarian?) aspect of the AGW establishment.
It is a creed and heresy will not be tolerated!
Whatever else, it is not coming across as science.

I see it the way Natalie does. To me it basically says ‘even if AGW is true, the government has no business shoving it down the people’s throat’ – which reflects my own attitude, more or less, not being a scientists.

I thought it could be taken both ways – and certainly the idea that you might end up in gaol if you refuse to subscribe to the orthodoxy is quite anti-warmist. Definitely not just taking this piss out of the evil Exxon-funded deniers.

Global warming proponents had been making hay out of every environmental calamity they could for quite some time. Hurricanes? That’s global warming. Flooding? Global warming. Record high temperatures? Global warming. Etc.

The problem with this is that it’s poor science. Climate variations are only noticeable on time scales across several years (or even decades), since there are numerous cycles and patterns of local weather variation.

All the global warming zealots who thought it was a good idea to live by the sword of notable local weather extremes and calamities are now finding that such a strategy has a few risks, especially during la nina years when unseasonably cold weather patterns are the norm.

You can’t have it both ways. If you want a debate to be scientific then you need to keep it at that level, if you start polluting the debate with fear mongering, politics, and dirty tricks then you change the playing field, and only maybe in your favor in the short term.

I think Natalie Solent nailed it. Whether it is mocking AGW per se is not clear; what it is mocking, without question, is the hectoring type of public announcement on issues such as this. So I think Delingpole is on the right track.

Who Are We?

The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.